On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.